MESSAGE 



QUAKERISM 



CHARLES M.WOODMAN 







Class 
Book 



3X77 7?/ 



YV i s^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE PRESENT DAY MESSAGE 
OF QUAKERISM 



The 
Present Day Message 



of 



Quakerism 



BY 
CHARLES M. WOODMAN 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 






&\s 



Copyright 1915 
By 
CHARLES M. WOODMAN 1 




s&c 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 

MAY -5 I9I5 

©CI.A397876 



THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

TO THE MEMBERS 

OF THE 

FRIENDS MEETING IN PORTLAND, MAINE 

WHO IN CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, IN SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP 

AND IN LIVING WHICH EXEMPLIFIES THE TRUTHS 

HEREIN SET FORTH, HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE 

INSPIRATION, AND AFFORDED THE CONSISTENT 

BACKGROUND FOR THESE MESSAGES. 



FOREWORD 

The chapters of this little book are the 
outgrowth of messages given to the congre- 
gation, which, week by week, assembles for 
worship in the Friends Church in Portland, 
Maine. They were given in the first place 
under the inspiration of a felt need for 
knowledge in the fundamentals of Quaker- 
ism. They represent a very real concern 
to set forth at not too great length, and yet 
clearly and forcibly the essential features of 
that faith and practice, which for more than 
two centuries have characterized the Soci- 
ety of Friends. They make no claim to 
originality, but have sought to gather up 
and present in a fresh way truths which have 
been for generations part of the spiritual 
equipment of Friends everywhere. It is 
the hope of the author that for Young 

[vii] 



FOREWORD 

Friends, and for those looking for a modern 
statement of the Quaker position, this book 
will fill a place at present not overcrowded. 
The book goes to its larger audience, as 
the messages went to their first hearers, with 
the prayer that it may shed light on the 
path to truth, and help to a deeper appre- 
ciation of the way in which the Heavenly 
Father would more intimately share all the 
life of his children. 

Portland, Maine. 
March, 1915. 



[▼Mil 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

I. 

The Basis of the Quaker Faith 



• • 



II. 

The Guide of the Quaker Life . . .31 

III. 

The Creed of the Quaker Church . . . 55 

IV. 

The Field of the Quaker Message . . .81 



[fcj 



THE BASIS OF THE QUAKER 
FAITH 



"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the word was God. The same was in the begin- 
ning with God. All things were made through him; and 
without him was not anything made that hath been made. 
In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And 
the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness appre- 
hended it not. 

"There came a man, sent from God, whose name was 
John. The same came for witness, that he might bear wit- 
ness of the light, that all might believe through him. He 
was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of 
the light. There was the true light, even the light which 
lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in the 
world, and the world was made through him, and the world 
knew him not. He came unto his own, and they that were 
his own received him not. But as many as received him, 
to them gave he the right to become children of God, even 
to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among 
us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten 
from the Father), full of grace and truth." 

Gospel According to John. 

"The vital principle of the Christian faith is the truth 
that man's salvation and higher life are personal matters 
between the individual soul and God." 

Discipline. 



THE BASIS OF THE QUAKER 
FAITH 

The Society of Friends originated in 
England in the middle of the Seventeenth 
Century as a protest against English Prot- 
estantism. When England broke away 
from the Church of Rome she shattered the 
fetters of her religious slavery so close to 
the papal throne that she unfortunately 
dragged after her practically all the chains 
of sacerdotalism, ceremonialism and ritual- 
ism which had characterized her relations 
with the Roman Church. The king of Eng- 
land seized these dangling fetters, fastened 
them to his own person, and established an 
authority in religion no less rigorous than 
that formerly held by the pope. The inde- 
pendent churches in their turn rose in pro- 
test, and when they came into political 
power they established a religious authority 

[3] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

as rigorous and intolerant as any that had 
preceded it. Personal religion sank to the 
levels of slavish adherence to the prescribed 
forms and ceremonies of a ritualistic Church 
service. It was content with intellectual 
assent to dogma, with little or no effort to 
make the moral life rise to the Christlike 
standard. It took its religious nourishment 
in predigested doses from ecclesiastical 
spoons, held in many instances by those 
whose lives were glaring refutations of the 
truths they administered. 

Against such a travesty of Christianity 
the message of Quakerism arose as a firm, 
persistent and irresistible protest. Its 
founder, George Fox, in his search for peace 
of mind and heart made trial of all that the 
established and independent churches had to 
offer in the way of ministerial advice, forms, 
ceremonies, rituals and dogmas. They were 
to him but the vestments of religion, the shell 
from which the meat had been extracted, 
wells to which he came with a thirsty soul 
and found no water. He tells us that in his 

[4] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

despair of finding help from any outward 
source he finally discovered within himself 
a power which directed him to the founda- 
tion of all life, Jesus Christ. He speaks of 
it in the first instance, as a "Voice," and 
later refers to it as the "Light," the "Seed," 
the "Principle" of God within man, the 
"Christ within." (cf. "Journal of George 
Fox." Jones. Introd. p. 29.) In yielding 
to "that of God" within him he found 
great joy. The shadows disappeared and 
he walked in the light of a new life. He 
had found immediate and personal rela- 
tions with God without the help of any 

of the so-called religious agencies of his 
time. 

He had discovered as an experience in 
his own life that man can have direct access 
to the very heart of God. For him this was 
the beginning and essence of all true per- 
sonal religion, and if yielded to led straight 
on to the power and victory of a Christ- 
filled life. On this he based his message. 
He found to his surprise that the Scriptures 

[*] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

were full of teachings substantiating this 
truth. He discovered in the pages of his- 
tory abundant illustrations. He preached 
what he had experienced, and so eager were 
the people of his day for this vital principle 
of religion that they flocked to the standard 
he raised like doves to the windows. With 
this positive declaration of vital Christian- 
ity, that every man may have intimate and 
direct personal relations with God through 
Jesus Christ, he protested against the 
sounding brass professions, and the clang- 
ing cymbal ceremonialism of his day; and 
before he departed this world for his eternal 
reward he left in Great Britain and Ireland 
fifty thousand followers, who in the face 
of the bitterest persecution were constantly 
bearing witness to the virility of this great 
truth. 

This in substance is the situation which 
called the Society of Friends into existence. 
Quakerism arose as a protest against a 
Protestantism which in its formalism had 
submerged the vital principle that the Chris- 

[«] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

tian religion is fundamentally a matter of 
personal and immediate fellowship between 
the individual soul and God. On this truth 
the Quakerism of the Seventeenth Century- 
based its message. On this truth Quakerism 
has woven the fabric of its life for more 
than two centuries. On this truth Quaker- 
ism stands today endeavoring to show the 
practical value of its message in rigid appli- 
cation to all phases of man's religious, moral 
and social life. 

The Scriptural warrant for this position 
is rich and varied, unfolding itself alike in 
Old and New Testaments, and pictured in 
character, psalm, prophecy and teaching. 
No better statement of this fundamental 
truth can be found than that given in John 
1 : 1-14. This passage is chosen because it 
contains the verse which has often been 
called the Quaker text: "There was the 
true light, even the light which lighteth 
every man, coming into the world." It is 
also worthy of note because it so clearly 
admits even in a New Testament setting 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

the possibility of personal recognition of 
God without the knowledge of the historical 
Christ entering as a factor into the problem. 
This makes personal relations with God a 
universal potentiality. 

The passage is an effort in terms of the 
"Word" and the "Light" to show the ac- 
tivity of what we may call the "Eternal 
Christ" in the cosmos and in human experi- 
ence before his incarnation, as recorded in 
the 14th verse — "And the Word became 
flesh, and dwelt among us." The writer 
would call attention to his oneness with 
God, (vs. 1, 2) to his creative activity, 
(v. 3) to his life as the light of men, shining 
for every man, (vs. 4, 9) to his being un- 
apprehended, unrecognized and unreceived, 
even by his own, (vs. 5, 10, 11) and also to 
the fact that wherever men yielded them- 
selves to his influence they became in a real 
spiritual sense the children of God. (vs. 12, 
13.) The sequence implied in verse 14, 
"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt 
among us," locates this revelation and sal- 

[8] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

vation previous to the physical appearance 
of Christ in the incarnation. 

The whole passage links the manifesta- 
tions of God to man in the old dispensa- 
tion to the fuller manifestations of God in 
the new dispensation. In Quaker phrase it 
describes the workings of the "Inner Light," 
the "Seed," the "Principle of God within" 
every man. This is but another way of de- 
scribing the inspiration which came to the 
psalmists, and the divine voice which spoke 
to the prophets. This Light that lighteth 
every man (v. 9) was the voice that said to 
Abram, "Get thee out of thy country;" 
(Gen. 12: 1) it was the strength which sus- 
tained Job in his great trial, and enabled 
him to say, "I know that my Redeemer 
liveth." (Job 19: 25.) It was the inspira- 
tion which came to the young prophet, when, 
bowing before the seraphim, he felt his lips 
touched with the live coal from off the altar, 
and heard the words, "Whom shall I send, 
and who will go for us?" (Isa. 6:8.) It 
was this which in New Testament times 

[•] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

brought to Cornelius the consciousness that 
Peter's words were true when he said, "In 
every nation he that f eareth him, and work- 
eth righteousness, is acceptable to him." 
(Acts 10:35.) 

Scriptural terminology differs in defining 
the method of this divine and human com- 
munication, and theologians for centuries 
have quarreled over what inspiration is, but, 
when the dust of these differences has set- 
tled, the truth stands out even clearer than 
before in both Scriptural and theological 
perspective, that in all ages and races God 
has seen fit to reveal himself directly, imme- 
diately and personally to man. The differ- 
ences are ripples on the surface caused by 
men's theological bias, intellectual training 
and temperament; the agreement on the 
fundamental fact of immediate revelation 
is the movement of the mighty current 
which has been ceaselessly flowing through 
human life from the hour that Adam 
"Heard the voice of Jehovah God walking 
in the garden in the cool of the day," to that 

[10] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

personal experience with the Divine Spirit 
in the life of the poet when he said, — 

"And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
• •••••••• 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

And rolls through all things." 

This basis of the Quaker faith, thus exem- 
plified in the origin of the Society of 
Friends as a protest against religious abuses 
and shallowness, and thus traced in the 
teaching and experience of the Scripture, 
is gathered up by Robert Barclay (Apol- 
ogy Props. V, & VI.) and put in a three- 
fold statement — "First, that God . . . hath 
given to every man, ... a certain day or 
time of visitation. . . . Secondly, that for 
this end God hath communicated and given 
unto every man a measure of the light of 
his own Son, a measure of grace, or a meas- 
ure of the Spirit, which the Scripture ex- 
presses by several names. . . . Thirdly, that 
God, in and by this Light and Seed, invites, 

[ii] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

calls, exhorts and strives with every man, 
in order to save him; which, as it is received 
and not resisted, works the salvation of all, 
even of those who are ignorant of the death 
and sufferings of Christ, and of Adam's 
fall." 

In making the basis of his faith within his 
own soul, the Friend consistently extols, 
reveres, and worships the God-man Christ 
Jesus, who in his incarnation, his sacrifice, 
his resurrection and his teachings is the out- 
ward expression on the plains of history of 
this spiritual and inward experience within 
the caverns of every man's life, where the 
Divine Spirit, in the voice of gentle stillness, 
would have direct dealings with the human 
soul. 

The Christ of the manger, the cross and 
the empty tomb is the great beacon, sending 
his light down through the centuries and 
out to all the darkened places of humanity's 
life, to aid men everywhere to follow the 
light within their own souls. In fact, so 
essential is the life and work of the Christ 

[12] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

of history that were there no story of his 
life as given in the four Gospels, were there 
no data of what he did and said, men who 
had yielded themselves to the inward call 
would by imagination, poetry, idealism or 
dream, posit some figure in the annals of 
humanity's life, which would embrace within 
itself the essential characteristics of One, 
whom we know lived and died and rose 
again, Jesus of Nazareth. Perchance this 
is why in the lore and legend of many 
ancient peoples we find the mythical stories 
of how their gods came down to walk and 
live with men. On the other hand, did we 
possess simply the historical Christ, he 
would at best remain a distant figure, and 
his power would be limited to lofty moral 
and spiritual teaching and noble example. 
He would be stripped of that point of con- 
tact with man, by means of which he now 
erects in every life yielding to his call a cross 
which is the complement of the Calvary of 
nineteen hundred years ago. Because of 
this immediate divine access, this inner 

[13] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

touch of God with man, we have not a sal- 
vation in name and theory, a theological 
dogma, but a salvation through the Cross 
of Christ wrought out in Christlike 
character. 

To look afield for corroborative witness of 
this basis of faith is to find a testimony well- 
nigh universal. Missionaries returning from 
the depths of China, Africa and India tell 
of finding in those dark spots of the earth, 
characters which can be described in no 
other way than with the attributes of the 
Christlike life. These souls have responded 
to the story of the Gospel with an avidity 
which has been almost startling to those who 
knew that the name of Jesus of Nazareth 
had never been spoken in their midst. 

When the Greek philosopher Socrates, 
who wears a character and a soul like a 
Christian saint, in speaking of the Deity 
says, "I move not without thy knowledge," 
and the Roman Seneca can say, "There is 
a holy spirit in us that treateth us as we 
treat him," something other than mere men- 

[14] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

tality must account for these and other blos- 
soms of spiritual fragrance which spring out 
of ancient pagan mire. All the great lead- 
ers of modern philosophy build their struc- 
tures on the immediate testimony of self- 
consciousness, and in so doing parallel from 
the angle of intellect, the building of 
thought and practice which the early 
Friends raised on the truth of immediate 
and direct access to God. However men 
may differ in their philosophic interpreta- 
tions of the material universe, it is interest- 
ing to note how they are surely feeling their 
way down to a spiritual basis for their 
reasoning, and thus founding their systems 
on that which lies beneath what can be seen 
with the eye, or handled with the hand. In 
seeking this bedrock they are close to the 
depths where none other than the voice of 
God speaks to the soul of man. 

Bergson exploits intuition and provokes 
the inference that if intuitions are valid we 
have reached the truth of things before the 
reason has time to get started. The "open- 

[15] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

ings" of the early Friends, as recorded in 
their journals and letters, touch a chord 
which strikingly harmonizes with this mod- 
ern teaching. The follower of George Fox, 
or the disciple of Bergson, might well be 
responsible for the sentiment expressed in 
"The Quaker of the Olden Time," 

"The presence of the wrong or right 
He rather felt than saw." 

The witness of a man's own inner experi- 
ence is sufficient guarantee of the reality of 
this basis of faith, but when the philosopher, 
Rudolf Eucken, who has made a life study 
of psychological and spiritual problems, 
confirms the personal testimony, the man 
who lives with his spirit breathing the dead- 
ening atmosphere of the modern materialistic 
world has good reason to hold his head high 
and take his light from under the bushel. 
Eucken believes that from time to time in 
the course of history, spiritual impulses arise 
which are fundamentally different from 
physical self-preservation. "They force 
human activity into particular channels; 

[16] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

they speak to us with a tone of command 
and require absolute obedience." He be- 
lieves that the spiritual life is not the prod- 
uct of a gradual development from the life 
of nature, but has an independent origin 
and evolves new powers and standards. The 
spiritual life is a universal life, which tran- 
scends man, is shared by him, and raises him 
to itself. Change the manner of statement 
here, and substitute the name of George 
Fox, or Robert Barclay for Rudolf Eucken, 
and it would not strain the imagination much 
to find oneself following some early Quaker 
exposition of the doctrine of the Inner Light 
in its power to lift and transform all who 
yield themselves to its leading. 

The student at his desk searching for 
truth, the man in the gutter lifted to his 
feet by a power beyond him, the youth lured 
on by the inspiration of an ideal, the child 
yielding to higher things in home and 
Church, all alike unite in bearing witness 
to the reality of this personal experience 
which finds voice in the universal testimony, 

[17] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

that the vital principle of the Christian faith 
is the truth that man's salvation and higher 
life are personal matters between the indi- 
vidual soul and God. 

"The Quaker religion which he (George 
Fox) founded is something which it is im- 
possible to overpraise. In a day of shams, 
it was a religion of veracity rooted in spirit- 
ual inwardness, and a return to something 
more like the original gospel truth than men 
had ever known in England. So far as our 
Christian sects today are evolving into lib- 
erality, they are simply reverting in essence 
to the position which Fox and the early 
Quakers so long ago assumed." ("Varieties 
of Religious Experience." James, p. 6.) 
There can be no monopoly of such a truth 
as this. The Friends proclaimed it when it 
was obscured and hidden. They were as 
rescuers bearing a cup of water from the 
mountain spring to parched and thirsty lips. 
To attempt to corner the market of this 
truth were as foolish as to build a fence 
around an acre of the Atlantic Ocean, and 

[18] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

thus claim to have a mortgage on the mighty 
deep. The basis of faith is as broad as 
humanity, and as free as the air we breathe. 
It is for all men everywhere. 

The history of the Society of Friends 
does not occupy a large place in the story 
of nineteen Christian centuries, but its 
heroic effort to demonstrate the practical 
value of this basis of faith (direct personal 
relations with God) has given it an influence 
out of all proportion to its size. Quakerism 
is unique, not in its fundamental belief, but 
in the methods it has chosen to logically and 
thoroughly apply its faith to every phase of 
religious and social life. 

Arguments based upon the Scripture 
have been written in favor of and against 
the Friend's position in eliminating from 
his religious practice not only the five sac- 
raments exclusively Roman Catholic, but 
also the two sacraments used by most Prot- 
estant churches, Water Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper. He quarrels not with those 
who are really blessed in their use, even 

[19] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

though every fresh light thrown on the 
Bible is confirming the Quaker's spiritual 
interpretation of these outward forms. But, 
seeing them in historical perspective, he 
notes their Old Testament and Jewish cere- 
monial origin ; he sees them carried over into 
the new era with many other things like the 
use of meats, unleaven bread and washings 
of many kinds ; he observes how these mate- 
rialistic forms have been substituted time 
and again for an inward and personal spirit- 
ual experience; he notes how like baby 
clothes of a First Century faith they still 
cling to a Christianity that in centuries is 
nearing its majority. With his feet estab- 
lished on the fundamental of the soul's 
access to the Spirit of God, these appear as 
material crutches with which souls limp into 
the presence of God, when it is his intent 
that we should be healthy souls growing up 
unto a full grown man, unto the measure of 
the stature of the fullness of Christ. 

The Friend finds nothing in Scripture to 
contradict this position. On the contrary 

[20] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

he finds much to support it. John the Bap- 
tist's statement, in speaking to the people 
about Jesus, "I baptized you in water; 
but he shall baptize you j in the Holy 
Spirit/' (Mark 1 : 8) and the Apostle Paul's 
two references to the work of Christ as hav- 
ing done away with ordinances, (Eph. 2: 15, 
Col. 2: 14) lead one naturally to infer that 
ordinances as such have no place in the 
Christian dispensation, unless there is some 
definite instruction to the contrary. This 
instruction we do not find in the New Tes- 
tament. Jesus complied with the water 
baptism of John as he conformed to other 
Jewish ceremonies. In fact water baptism 
whenever referred to in the New Testament 
is always a part of the Jewish ceremonial- 
ism, linked with or carried over into early 
Christian practice. Jesus held water bap- 
tism so lightly that it is recorded, that he 
"Himself baptized not." (John 4:2.) He 
used only the baptism with the Holy Spirit, 
and sought to lead his disciples down into 
the life of the Spirit. He referred to his 

[21] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

baptism in words that can have none other 
than a spiritual meaning: "I have a baptism 
to be baptized with/' (Luke 12: 50) he said, 
and he asked his followers if they could be 
baptized with his baptism. (Mark 10: 38.) 
All his commands were spiritual in their 
nature. When therefore he sent his apos- 
tles to disciple all nations, baptizing them 
into the name of the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit, (Matt 28: 19) the logic of 
his life, his baptism, and his teachings, leads 
to the conclusion that he has in mind here 
only a spiritual process. The Great Com- 
mission was evidently interpreted in this 
spiritual way in the Apostolic Age, else the 
Apostle Paul would not have been so em- 
phatic in saying (referring to water bap- 
tism), "I thank God that I baptized none 
of you . . . ," and "Christ sent me not to 
baptize." (I Cor. 1:14, 17.) For him 
baptism was a burial into Christ's death, 
and a resurrection into newness of life in 
him; (Rom. 6:3-5) it was a putting on 
of Christ. (Gal. 3: 27.) For the Apostle 

[22] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

Peter the term baptism distinctly does not 
refer to the use of water, but to the inter- 
rogation of a good conscience before God, 
(I Peter 3: 21.) 

In the same way the Friend finds no 
Scriptural warrant for the establishment of 
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Jesus 
ate the paschal meal with his disciples, and, 
in the way in which he so often gave spiritual 
significance to even the common things, he 
interpreted that Passover Supper in terms 
of his death. He was to die, but they, even 
because of that death, were to be fed and 
sustained by him in their spiritual life. As 
often, therefore, as they ate the passover 
meal, or even broke bread around the family 
table, or shared their fellowship in the early 
Christian Love Feast, they should always 
remember the deeper significance which he 
gave to the bread and the cup. Link this 
spiritual emphasis regarding these two 
things with the whole spiritual atmosphere 
of Jesus' teaching, catch the spirit of his 
method which sought gradually to wean 

[23] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

them from the strict ceremonialism of the 
Jewish religion, and see the whole through 
eyes unfogged by any and all later ecclesi- 
astical interpretations of these things in 
Jesus' life, and there appears no obligation 
whatever for the practice of any ordinance 
in the Christian Church. 

If the paternal and filial relation is the 
figure best describing the fellowship which 
God holds with man, and this was the 
supreme revelation of Jesus, then the ques- 
tion is pertinent as to what possible place 
the form and ceremony can consistently hold 
as a part of the disciple's expression of his 
religious life. The little child performs no 
ceremony when, in need of comfort or 
strength, it seeks refuge in its father's arms. 
The little child goes through no form when 
the love of its heart leads it to fondly twine 
its arms around the father's neck and lay 
its face upon his cheek. If this most real 
and genuine earthly tie expresses itself so 
simply, how much more shall your Heavenly 
Father in like manner receive into deepest 

[24] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

and most genuine fellowship all who seek 
the strength and comfort of the everlasting 
arms. These are some of the reasons why 
the Friends, who have earned the reputation 
of being the most spiritual of all Protestant 
people, eliminate from their practice the 
outward form and ceremony. These are 
some of the reasons why to them 

"The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need," 

and the holiest communion is that experi- 
ence in their inner life, when 

"The world that time and sense have known 
Falls off and leaves us God alone." 

Again, in the realm of Church polity, 
religious activity and worship, this funda- 
mental basis of faith logically eliminates all 
types of sacerdotalism. The Church must 
be democratic in form of government, where 
the voice and personality of each and every- 
one counts in the common life for all it is 
worth before God. In matters of spiritual 
life the authority of priest, or minister, or 
Church, as standing between the individual 

[25] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

soul and God, is not only inconsistent with 
the basis of faith, but is contrary to the New 
Testament teaching. Historically speaking 
it is the dogma of a Church hierarchy which 
in this way sought to dominate man into 
meek submission, and cower him beneath 
the threat of an ecclesiastical big stick, which 
assumed the power to fall on him in the here- 
after, as well as to beat him into subjection 
while he eked out his spiritual existence in 
a wicked world. On the other hand this 
principle raises a voice against that modern 
tendency which assumes to let a man's re- 
ligious activity limit itself to occupying a 
seat in the meeting for worship, and con- 
tributing, usually in a meagre way, to the 
financial support of the Church. The min- 
ister is supposed to provide him with a 
weekly spiritual ration, properly seasoned 
with ecclesiastical dogma, while his religious 
muscles become weak and flabby for want 
of use, and his anaemic soul is headed for 
the hospital, which becomes the path to his 
spiritual grave. 

[26] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

The man with his spiritual life built upon 
the true basis of faith enters the hour of 
worship, not to hear the preacher, to be 
pleased with the music, or to enjoy the fel- 
lowship of kindred spirits. These must be 
incidental to that solemn search on the part 
of his own spirit, for that touch and com- 
munion with the Great Spirit of our Father 
who is not only in heaven, but whose pres- 
ence pervades the secret recesses of the 
human heart, and waits in the inner chamber 
of the soul for us to receive our share of his 
illimitable life. That soul which has not fed 
at this inward table of the Lord goes away 
from the hour of worship hungry. 

In conclusion, it is fitting to note the 
depth at which this basis of faith lies, and 
the position it holds in the light of some 
present day tendencies. In an age which 
has been called an age of doubt, when a 
practical agnosticism pervades much of the 
thinking world, in a generation when the 
outworks of the fortress of faith have seem- 
ingly one by one been taken, and the faith 

[27] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

of many has crumbled beneath the assault, 
be it known that this principle of direct and 
immediate personal dealings between the 
soul and God lies so far within and behind 
the lines of attack, that those who abide 
within its citadel have done little more than 
see the smoke of the battle, caused by the 
attack of materialism on the heights of 
spirituality. What is material, of the earth 
earthy, in our religion may succumb, but 
what is essentially spiritual will tower above 
all the strife, stronger, more virile, more 
vital than ever. 

Suppose for a moment, for the sake of 
laying bare the impregnable position of a 
vital, personal faith in God, that the worst 
of all the arrogant claims of the rationalist, 
the materialist, and the scientist are true. 
Suppose they have upset with their theory 
of evolution the pet idea which the Church 
has held for so long as to the method the 
Almighty used when he created man ; sup- 
pose they have with their destructive criti- 
cism torn the Bible into shreds; suppose 

[28] 



BASIS OF FAITH 

they have, as with bullets, riddled man's 
belief in the miracles; suppose they have 
made man believe that there was no virgin 
birth, no cross on a Calvary, no empty 
tomb; suppose that their case were so 
strong (a supposition which even the most 
daring rationalist knows he has no ground 
for making), that ninety per cent, of all 
this story about Jesus appears as a myth 
and fable ; suppose all this had a fair chance 
of dominating human thought (a chance 
which is absurd in the light of the most 
recent thought), even then the basis of faith 
in God's personal dealings with man is un- 
touched. The man who is acquainted with 
the Eternal Christ still walks with him in 
trusting assurance. The man who has 
yielded himself in his day of visitation, to 
the call, the invitation, the summons, the 
wooing influence of the "Inner Light" still 
moves within the brightness of its shining. 
Within the warmth of his overshadowing 
presence the soul that has fellowshiped with 
God basks in "the light of his countenance." 

[29] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

The essentials of faith are forever secure 
in the heart of man and the heart of God. 
Here is the safety vault of the ages, based 
on the rock of humanity's fundamental 
and divine equipment to receive God, and 
guarded by the presence of the eye which 
neither slumbers nor sleeps. 

All the disturbances of the intellectual, 
scientific and social world are but billows 
caused by surface storms. Meanwhile the 
soul in immediate communion with God, 
through the Eternal Christ, abides within 
the depths of the infinite ocean of God's life 
in a peace which the world can neither give 
nor take away. 

"So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine: 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for thee !' " 



[30] 



II 

THE GUIDE OF THE QUAKER 

LIFE 



Within! within, O turn 

Thy spirit's eyes, and learn 
Thy wandering senses gently to control; 
Thy dearest Friend dwells deep within thy soul, 

And asks thyself of thee, 
That heart, and mind, and sense, he may make whole 

In perfect harmony. 

Doth not thy inmost spirit yield 
And sink where Love stands thus revealed? 

Be still and veil thy face, 
The Lord is here, this is his holy place ! 
Then back to earth, and 'mid its toil and throng 
One glance within will keep thee calm and strong; 
And when the toil is o'er, how sweet, O God, to flee 

Within, to thee! 

Gerhard Tersteegen. 

Let me hear 
The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear; 
Read in my heart a still diviner law 
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! 

Whittier. 

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are 
sons of God. 

The Apostle Paul. 

The indwelling Spirit guides and controls the surren- 
dered life, and the Christian's constant and supreme busi- 
ness is obedience to him. 

Discipline. 



II 

THE GUIDE OF THE QUAKER 

LIFE 

A chain on the wrist and a halter around 
the neck are not pleasing metaphors with 
which to deal in speaking of humanity, 
unless it can be done in such delicate 
phraseology that the particular individual 
addressed appears at least to escape the 
restraint implied. And yet a strong case 
might be presented to show that the human 
family willingly, or protestingly submits to 
the pull of the rope drawn on by those forces 
without, which have so much to do in shap- 
ing man's activity and destiny. From the 
sensualist handcuffed to his vice, and the 
drunkard led on by his appetite, up through 
the scale to the noble youth wooed by the 
inspiration of a great ideal, and the strong 
man shaping his daily course by the chart 
of a worthy purpose, men everywhere and 

[33] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

always are being led. The grade may be 
up where the way is hard, or down where 
the way is easy, or on the dead level where 
man eats the very dust his progress makes, 
but the fact remains that he is in leading- 
strings, and most if not all are pretty good 
followers. The question of life then for each 
one becomes, not a debate as to whether he 
shall be led or not, but as to the quality of 
leadership to which he shall submit. A 
glance at some of the forces that operate 
to lead humanity will not be out of place 
as a background for an analysis of the Guide 
of the Quaker Life. 

There is the pleasure lover, the one who 
loves it so abnormally that he lives for it. 
It is the goal of his existence. The early 
Friends . followed Puritanical influence in 
denouncing pleasure as such, and in stifling 
the sesthetical side of life. Pleasure, art, 
music were all tabooed. The years, how- 
ever, have worn away the rigidity of this 
protest, and, in spite of Puritanical and 
early Quakerly indictments, every normal 

[34] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

person has a liking for pleasure. He re- 
gards it as a necessary spice, which is rightly- 
desirable to make palatable many otherwise 
disagreeable dishes. Pleasure in itself is not 
sin, and there is nothing in the essentials of 
Quakerism to forbid its legitimate use in an 
uplifting and wholesome atmosphere. But 
there are those who would live on spice, who 
care for little else, who make use of other 
things only as an excuse to keep their pal- 
ates continually inflamed with the condi- 
ments of experience. 

The Epicurean was not peculiar to an- 
cient Greece, or to the type observed in 
Palestine in Jesus' day, who said to his soul, 
"Eat, drink and be merry." Like the boy 
who cannot be made to eat bread unless 
it is thickly coated with marmalade, this 
modern Epicurean would have everything 
smeared with pleasure. Pleasure as a lead- 
ing-string in life indicates a childish outlook 
and a stunted development, and, like the 
will-o'-the-wisp, allures to a wild chase, but 
yields no permanent return. 

[35] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

There is the man led on by business, for 
whom the dollar and its accumulation is the 
goal of existence. He is not the master, but 
the slave of his work. He claims to own the 
business, his letter-heads would indicate as 
much, but everyone knows that in reality 
the business owns him. He has petted and 
pampered the young lion until the brute in 
its strength has placed its foot on his neck. 
He used to run the machinery, now he is 
little more than a cog in some wheel, made 
to mesh with other cogs in the corporation. 
Everyone appreciates the necessity of busi- 
ness, and knows the unavoidable pull of it, 
but something is wrong somewhere when the 
halter of work is so tight it shuts off the 
breath that longs to take refreshing draughts 
of a cultural, or religious atmosphere, and 
when the rope of business is so short that 
it permits feeding only on mercenary prov- 
ender. In all lines of legitimate business the 
reputation of the Friends is by no means 
unenviable. As the world estimates success 
the Friends have been successful in the field 

[36] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

of the farmer, the factory of the manufac- 
turer and the countinghouse of the mer- 
chant. But the picture portrayed when the 
farmer leaves his plow in the furrow, and 
his mowing machine in the field, and, hitch- 
ing up his team, drives, it may be, miles to 
Fifth Day morning meeting, is evidence 
that something other than the lure of bulg- 
ing barns and abundant harvests is the 
mainspring of the Friend's life. In the 
greedy tumultuous modern world of busi- 
ness where the money-maker consecrates his 
ability, and gives freely of self and gain 
for the sake of the Kingdom, and where the 
employer makes a distinction, and that a 
Christian one, between his treatment of 
machines and men (attitudes which have 
been characteristic of the Friend in business 
for two centuries), — in this self -centered 
world such living testimonies bear witness to 
the fact that something other than 

"The lust of power, the love of gain" 

has been the guide of the Quaker life. 

[37] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

Turning to a higher plane, many regard 
conscience as a sufficient guide, even in 
morals and religion. As a matter of fact, 
however, conscience is less an inspiration 
than a check. Its main function is to put 
out the danger signal, to call a halt. It is 
the protecting rail by the side of the path. 
It is judgment in the realm of ethics. 
Wrong, not right, arouses it. Carlyle said, 
"Had we never sinned we should have had 
no conscience." To follow conscience may 
lead to little more than a stationary exist- 
ence, not a moral and spiritual progress. 
Conscience can be trained to speak or not 
to speak, like the watch-dog, educated to 
wag his tail at the approach of some, to 
growl at the approach of others. The worst 
sins in the history of religion, from the 
drowning of her babe in the Ganges River 
by the Hindoo mother, to the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, have been committed 
without a compunction of conscience. 

The searing of conscience is too easy an 
operation to need the skill of a surgeon. 

[38] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

Barclay calls conscience the lantern, and 
points to its ultimate failure, unless it have 
the light of the Divine Spirit burning within 
it. His figure may be out of harmony with 
the spirit of modern philosophy, and not in 
keeping with the present interpretation of 
the immanence of God, but it will still serve 
to emphasize the necessity for man to have 
as his ultimate guide something more posi- 
tively effective, and less subject to the drag 
of circumstance, environment and even per- 
sonal opinion, than that valuable monitor of 
the human spirit called conscience. 

The Friend in his early teaching, as set 
forth in the writings and experiences of 
George Fox, and in the theological treatise 
of Robert Barclay, maintained in thought 
and practice that it is man's privilege to be 
led directly by the Spirit of God. The 
Holy Spirit stirs the feelings, trains the 
conscience, illuminates the mind, and 
arouses the will. Nothing is clearer than 
that God is now as in the olden time speak- 
ing to men. "I will pour forth of my Spirit 

[39] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

upon all flesh: and your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy, and your young 
men shall see visions, and your old men shall 
dream dreams." (Acts 2:17.) This is as 
much a promise for the modern prophet to 
apply to this age as it was for the Apostle 
Peter to use on the Day of Pentecost. The 
measure of modern inspiration is deter- 
mined by the human capacity for, and sen- 
sitiveness to the heavenly light, not by any 
ecclesiastical or priestly limitations set upon 
the outpouring of that divine life, which is 
in and around all things. 

This fact of spiritual leadership, attested 
in the present, as well as in the Seventeenth 
Century, by the personal Christian experi- 
ence, shifted the ultimate authority for 
human action and belief from the Church 
and from the Book to the Holy Spirit. As 
a matter of fact we find within our reach 
for Christian growth three important things, 
the Spirit-developed Church, the Spirit- 
inspired Book, and the Spirit-led life. 
These three factors are vital in the experi- 

[40] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

ence of the disciple. The Holy Spirit must 
always be given precedence. He guides and 
controls the surrendered life. The Chris- 
tian's constant and supreme business is 
obedience to him. He must lead. On the 
one side stands the Holy Scriptures, which, 
as interpreted by the Holy Spirit, are an 
unfailing source of spiritual truth for mold- 
ing the life and shaping the character. On 
the other side stands the Church, represent- 
ing the consensus of spiritual experience 
attained by those whose lives have been sur- 
rendered to the Spirit's leading. To the 
Church the believer looks for fellowship; 
upon the Church he leans, recognizing that 
the sanctified conclusions of the Church are 
above the judgment of a single individual. 
Thus the Christian is strengthened by the 
truths revealed to him as he prayerfully 
studies the pages of the Scriptures, and is 
fortified and supported by a Church fellow- 
ship into which he fully and heartily enters. 
He then finds himself sensitive to hear the 
voice of God speaking even in the silence 

[41] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

to his soul, and equipped to see the light 
from above falling upon the path and point- 
ing the way in which he should walk. This 
in substance is what the Friends have taught 
about the leadership of the Holy Spirit. 
Here is the Guide of the Quaker life. This 
is the distinctive message which the Society 
of Friends has contributed to the life of 
Protestantism. 

The world has borne witness that these 
people moved up against the current of the 
popular cry, of the easy way, of environ- 
ment and circumstance, — moved up against 
the current when it meant persecution, 
social ostracism, loss of business, and on 
occasion even imprisonment and death. The 
world has acknowledged that the Friends 
conducted themselves in this way because 
they were guided by a deeper principle than 
the impulses which mold the life of the 
average man. Yielding to the pull of this 
great spiritual law they walked serenely into 
the face of the storms of human life, as the 
iceberg held in the grip of the ocean 

[42] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

current plows its way against wind and 
wave. 

Such testimony, substantiated by per- 
sonal experience within and beyond the 
limits of the Society of Friends, needs no 
defense because experience echoed and re- 
echoed everywhere is its own best argument. 
However, the strength of this claim that 
man may be led by the Holy Spirit is rein- 
forced if we view it, first, in the light of 
Scriptural statement, second, as resting on 
the basis of faith, and third, as compared 
with the methods of God in other depart- 
ments of his creation. 

1. The patriarchs heard the call of the 
Spirit of God. By his guidance their 
careers were governed. The prophets were 
unceasingly faithful in delivering the mes- 
sage under the caption, "Thus saith Jeho- 
vah.'' Through the prophetic voice the 
people learned the will of God. Jesus defi- 
nitely promised this spiritual leadership to 
his disciples ; "And I will pray the Father, 
and he shall give you another Comforter, 

[43] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

that he may be with you forever, even the 
Spirit of truth." (John 14: 16, 17.) "When 
he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall 
guide you into all the truth." (John 16 :13.) 
The scene on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) 
is the first great witness to the validity of 
the Master's promise. The guidance given 
to the Apostle Paul in shaping his mission- 
ary journeys (Acts 13:2; 16:6; 20:22, 
23; 27: 23, 24) finds expression in his epis- 
tles in such statements as "Know ye not that 
ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit 
of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3: 16.) 
"For as many as are led by the Spirit of 
God, these are sons of God." (Rom. 8: 14.) 
2. A life led by the Holy Spirit is the 
logical outcome of a faith based on an imme- 
diate personal relationship with God. It is 
consistent with the nature of God that when 
he begins a vital Christian experience in 
any heart he will continue that experience 
in harmony with the methods used in its 
origin. If, without the aid of ecclesiastical 
authority, ordinance, or sacrament, God 

[U] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

begins a work of grace in the human spirit 
by direct and immediate communion, is it 
not reasonable to believe that the same God 
will nourish, support and guide that life, — 
and this by the direct and positive leadership 
of the Holy Spirit? 

The superstructure of faith must be con- 
sistent with the foundation. Its basis is 
deeply bedded in a personal relationship 
between the soul and God. The architect 
who drew the foundation plans made also 
the drafts and estimates for the whole build- 
ing. By what right, or with what expecta- 
tion of success, does a Christian man assume 
to erect on such a basis a life structure, 
shaped on any other principle than that 
which governed the placing of the founda- 
tion stones? A man can build a flimsy 
shack upon a cement foundation, and keep 
it in place by props braced to its sides, and 
guy-ropes tied to neighboring stakes and 
trees. But the proper structure for a 
cement foundation is a cement building, 
whose every wall shall be bedded into the 

[45] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

foundations themselves, fastened to, and 
rising from them around those hidden rein- 
forcements, which make the whole a physical 
unit. We can erect, if we will, on the great 
foundations of faith in Jesus Christ shabby 
huts of Christian experience, held in place 
by the stays of material prosperity, and the 
guy-ropes of pleasure and circumstance, but 
the promises of our Master, fulfilled in his 
early disciples and in the lives of our fathers, 
point to a type of character, not only rest- 
ing on the life of God, but molded and 
shaped by him both in the common daily 
routine, and in the decisions of its crucial 
hours. The Spirit-led life is the logical 
product of the Spirit-born soul. 

3. In the light of man's increasing 
knowledge of nature in her manifold activ- 
ities we are more willing than ever to recog- 
nize the hand of God in material phenomena. 
The laws of nature are the thoughts of God ; 
he who discovers those laws thinks God's 
thought after him. There can therefore be 
no essential quarrel between science and 

[46] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

revelation. They are both expressions of 
the same God. If we learn the ways of God 
in the world about us, we may presume, at 
least, that his methods will not differ on that 
highest level of his creation, the spirit of 
man. The law of gravitation holds the stars 
in their places and sustains the earth in its 
orbit. The same law causes the book to fall 
to the floor and the leaf to flutter to the 
ground. Or again, the world of the micro- 
scope is in harmony with the universe of the 
telescope. The force in yonder space which 
operates to draw together the nebulous 
gases, and to whirl them around each other 
until a star comes into being, finds expres- 
sion in the activity of the electron, which 
is believed to be a component part of the 
atom. Electrons, which in size are to the 
atom what a pin head is to the dome of 
St. Paul's Cathedral, appear to be endowed 
with a permanent electric charge and con- 
gregate in whirling masses to form the atom 
itself. 

Thus behind the star is a force, and be- 

[47] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

hind the atom is a force, and this single force 
is the heart of creation. Here we approach 
the realm where it is easy to see our God 
at work. To consider that the same power 
causes the leaf to fall which holds the earth 
in place, and the same force is active in the 
atom as worked when the Spirit of God 
moved upon chaos, and a world came into 
being, is to make us feel that even in the 
world of our common lives God has a right- 
ful sovereignty. A contemplation of scien- 
tific data makes us realize that Jesus was 
uttering more than idealistic fancies, when 
he mentioned the divine care of the sparrow 
and the robing of the lily, as object lessons 
for our simple trust in the Great Father's 
care. 

Beside this as a corollary we recognize 
that the Spirit of him who moved upon the 
patriarchs, who spoke to the prophets, who 
guided the apostles and shaped the lives of 
the early Christians, will not decline to give 
his spiritual leadership to the weakest soul. 
In fact, he who is the same yesterday, today 

[48] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

and forever, leads men now as he led men 
of old. The springs of divine revelation 
have not dried up; the current of spiritual 
leadership is still a potent factor in the 
lives of men. If the early Friend learned 
this from his Bible and vital Christian ex- 
perience, shall the modern Friend take 
lower ground, when the very science which 
the man of faith has so often feared, con- 
spires to fortify this fundamental principle 
of the spiritual life? 

If in watching the long flight of the bird 
to find a summer home, I note that it fol- 
lows a leading which points the path along 
the trackless atmosphere, shall not I, yield- 
ing myself to the Power in my heart, bear 
witness that 

"He who, from zone to zone. 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright"? 

For the bird we say this is instinct, for man 
this is the Holy Spirit. 

In the rigid application of this principle 
to his inner and his outer life the early 

[49] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

Friend found himself crossing seas that had 
long remained unnavigated, and sailing be- 
tween a Scylla and a Charybdis which 
loomed on either side in no mean fashion. 
Hitherto the soul had felt its way out into 
the life of God, as a ship sailing in a heavy 
fog. Under the dogma of predestination, 
as then taught, some were destined to be 
saved, others doomed to be lost. The human 
part in this was a negligible quantity. The 
dread uncertainty which this bred in man's 
soul was like a load on his life. He could 
not tell whether this burden around his neck, 
the sense his soul possessed of God, was 
the cord by which the Divine Spirit sought 
to lead him in the green pastures and by the 
still waters, or a noose, which, when pulled 
tight, would hang him upon some judgment 
gibbet. He hoped for the former, he lived 
in dread of the latter. Christian assurance as 
understood today, where a soul can say, "I 
know I am saved;" "I am persuaded that 
he is able to guard that which I have com- 
mitted to him," was unknown. With his 

[50] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

proclamation that divine grace was free for 
every soul, the early Friend let the sunlight 
penetrate the mist in which man had been 
groping. With his preaching of a sense of 
divine favor for every believer, the shroud 
of gloom through which man had been wan- 
dering lifted, and he discovered again the 
truth of the Apostle's great assertion, "For 
I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, 
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love 
of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
(Rom. 8:38, 39.) This message of early 
Quakerism was the bugle-call announcing a 
spiritual emancipation which has increased 
until Protestantism everywhere proclaims it. 
The whole range of our practical life 
comes under the sway of this spiritual lead- 
ership. The Christ, whom the Friend ac- 
knowledges as Master, is not simply the 
guest admitted to the parlor of respectabil- 
ity; he is the companion of the kitchen and 

[51] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

there is not a closet in the soul to which 
he does not hold the key. In other words, 
we must learn to find in business and pleas- 
ure alike the will of God, and finding it, let 
that will always be our guide. "D. V." is 
not only a polite verbal condescension to the 
Almighty, it must be for us the primary 
consideration. 

"Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine." 

The Friend has never earned the reputa- 
tion of being an impracticable idealist. He 
knows that every normal life must have in 
it much of social relation, much of business 
and somewhat of pleasure. Every man 
makes a solution for his own life of the 
problem presented by these factors. The 
Friend believes the answer to his life ques- 
tion cannot be found with these elements 
alone. He must add to these the higher law 
of divine leadership. In this he has not 
eliminated the other factors and resorted to 
monasticism, nor has he permitted the divine 
element to play a merely professional and 

[52] 



GUIDE OF THE LIFE 

perfunctory part, and thus been content to 
wear his Christianity like a suit of clothes, 
which on occasion he can put on, and at will 
take off. He has boldly entered the nar- 
row channel between these two rocks and 
attempted to shape his course with the 
spiritual element of life as pilot. 

If for two centuries he has vindicated in 
any little measure the practical value of this 
type of life, by holding himself well poised 
and with his spirit peaceful, when those 
about him were rocking and shaking, it has 
been because the theory of divine leadership 
has for him become a practical reality. He 
has literally been in the grip and under the 
sway of an inner principle, which has gone 
far beyond the temporal and material set- 
ting of his surface life. 

The moons of Jupiter are eight, and they 
move around the planet while it in turn 
moves around the sun. If the planet should 
break the law that shapes its orbit and make 
one of its moons the center around which 
to move, a physical cataclysm would take 

[53] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

place which would shake the course of dis- 
tant stars. There are many satellites to 
every human life. The cause for trouble in 
our affairs lies in the fact that we are tied 
to our satellites, instead of making them 
subject to us. We break away from our 
divinely appointed orbit around the Son of 
God, and attempt to negotiate a path 
around and among these things of mundane 
and temporal significance. Or, to change 
the figure, we are tethered like sheep to the 
stakes of pleasure, business, the social whirl; 
and like sheep we meander round and 
round, and train our consciences to acqui- 
esce, while we feed our souls on weeds, 
witchgrass and husks. We must learn to 
tether our souls to the throne of the Shep- 
herd God, and in the very tethering enter 
freedom, liberty, the abundant life. Then 
we shall know that the whole range of 
human experience, the universe itself and 
the infinite life of God is the field in which 
our souls may feed, the field in which he 
shall make us to lie down in green pastures, 
and lead us beside the still waters. 

[54] 



Ill 

THE CREED OF THE QUAKER 
CHURCH 



Thought is deeper than all speech, 
Feeling deeper than all thought; 

Souls to souls can never teach 
What unto themselves was taught. 

We are spirits clad in veils; 

Man by man was never seen; 
All our deep communing fails 

To remove the shadowy screen. 

C7. P. Cranca. 

To do thy will is more than praise, 

As words are less than deeds, 
And simple trust can find thy ways 

We miss with chart of creeds. 

Whittier. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part ; but when 
that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall 
be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I 
felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become 
a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see 
in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know 
in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was 
fully known. 

The Apostle Paul. 

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is 
come, he shall guide you into all the truth: for he shall not 
speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, 
these shall he speak: and he shall declare unto you the 
things that are to come. 

Jesus. 



Ill 

THE CREED OF THE QUAKER 
CHURCH 

In my dreams I saw a large and mag- 
nificent estate which had been presented to 
a little boy by a very rich and generous man. 
He withheld himself from the lad for a time, 
leaving him to wander at will through the 
fields, the forests and along the roads. He 
hoped that the boy's natural interest would 
lead him to form an estimate of the nature 
of the donor. The man was not mistaken. 
One morning the lad started out into the 
midst of all the natural beauties and won- 
ders, determined if possible to discover the 
kind of man who had given him all this 
wealth, and resolved that, if he was success- 
ful in his quest, he would formulate his dis- 
covery in words and write it down, that he 
might then always be positive on such an 
important matter. 

l 67 l i- I . a 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

Seeing a field by the roadside he climbed 
the fence, and found himself in the midst 
of a profusion of spring wild flowers. The 
violets and anemones, arbutus and colum- 
bine, filled the air with fragrance and his 
eye with a sense of beauty. As he stooped 
to fill his hands with all he could hold of this 
loveliness it was suddenly impressed upon 
him that the giver was one who loved fra- 
grance and beauty. So he hurried to the 
house and wrote down his definition, "I 
believe the one who gave me this estate loves 
fragrance and beauty." He went out again 
to find more of such tokens as would confirm 
his statement, and he noted the birds sing- 
ing in the tree tops, the bees sucking the 
honey, and the cattle grazing in the field. 
He pondered his earlier statement, and real- 
izing its inadequacy, he changed it so that 
it read, "I believe the one who gave me this 
estate loves beauty and fragrance, and is 
fond of the birds, the bees and the cattle." 
Surely that described him, but when he 
found in the wood paths signs pointing the 

[58] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

way to pleasant places, and warnings set 
up over poisonous growths, he began to 
realize that the giver had in his heart a love 
and concern for the little boy, and so he was 
obliged to change his definition once more 
to make it large enough to fit his newly 
discovered truth. 

Then he longed to find the giver himself, 
who must really be his friend. One day he 
met him in the forest road, and when he 
saw him he knew that all those definitions 
which he had made were painfully inade- 
quate. He must go to the house and re- 
write all his definitions. As weeks went on 
and he came to know the giver more inti- 
mately, he began to understand that all 
efforts at definition, as valuable as they were 
for him while he was making them, were in 
reality so incommensurate that he must find 
another and better way to express his belief 
in his new companion. So he set to work 
to let the spirit of his generous and loving 
friend mold and shape his spirit until in 
his love and life, his likes and dislikes, he 

[59] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

should reflect to all others that same great 
personality. He discovered as he made this 
the principle of his life, that the definitions 
he had made were but human conceptions 
which, almost as soon as formulated, were 
outgrown. His relation to his friend, with 
his wonderful works, and gifts and love, 
became hereafter a great spiritual adven- 
ture. He began to comprehend that the 
richness and vastness of his friend's person- 
ality, expressed in such manifoldness, would 
require an eternity to explore, while the 
depths of his nature and wisdom, only in- 
finity could fathom. All this is but a story, 
and yet hidden within it lies the secret of 
the Friends' belief, and on its very surface 
may be found the reasons why the Society 
of Friends stands before the world as a 
creedless church. 

The Friends have always had intellectual 
conceptions regarding divine truth, and they 
fall closely in line with the fundamental 
position held by all those who have been 
recognized as truly evangelical in their char- 

[60] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

acter and spirit. They have, however, con- 
sistently refused to place these in the fore- 
ground as the conditions of entrance to their 
communion, because they have always rec- 
ognized experience as the basis of faith, and 
consequently the essential of all true fellow- 
ship. Experience always lies beneath any 
belief expressed in words, and the best 
intellectual statements fail to describe a 
vital experience. Men may, and do fellow- 
ship together on the basis of a common love 
and common devotion, who in opinion stand 
radically opposed to one another. On the 
other hand, those who mentally assent to the 
same creed are often so far apart in their 
inner experience, in their loves, and in the 
objects of their devotion that their intel- 
lectual unity of faith is little other than a 
nominal affair. 

This fact of a constantly unfolding spirit- 
ual experience as the platform of the Quaker 
fellowship, and consequently as the Quaker 
substitute for a creed, finds vindication in 
many realms of thought and life, both his- 

[61] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

torical and contemporary. The mention of 
some of these by way of illustration, to- 
gether with a discussion of the inadequacy 
of the creed as a basis for Church member- 
ship, will help to clarify the Friends' posi- 
tion set forth in the previous pages. 

The method of the child in learning 
things about his estate is the method of the 
scientist in his search for truth. He began 
by stating what he found in the form of 
definitions. Inferences from these were 
truths. Then, on further research, when 
he discovered that his previously conceived 
truth was frequently error, he changed his 
terminology and called his conclusions hy- 
potheses. That is, his inferences were held 
to be tentatively true, as a basis to work on, 
until by further research more truth should 
be unfolded. By this method the scientist 
became free in his quest, and with open mind 
faced the universe, which has poured out 
upon him such a wealth of knowledge that 
the progress of science is one of the marvels 
of the present age. We live daily in expec- 

[62] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

tant wonder of what new story the scientist 
will tell us next. 

One day man found himself on the face 
of the earth, that is, in the expression of 
the psychologist, he came to self -conscious- 
ness, or in the phrase of Scripture, "Man 
became a living soul." (Gen. 2:7.) He 
forthwith set about examining the great 
world in which he had thus come to self- 
realization. He noted its physical construc- 
tion and forms of life ; he discovered his own 
mental powers; he entered into fellowship 
with God. By a combination of human 
outreaching and divine unfolding he formu- 
lated opinions about God, and man and the 
world. These in the realm of theology are 
called dogmas. They are parallel to the 
child's definition of his friend and to the 
scientist's hypotheses. If man had held his 
dogmas in the same way that the child and 
the scientist held their findings, the progress 
of Christianity would have kept pace with 
the advance of science, and the world would 
have been saved much hardship, intolerance, 

[63] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

and even devastating bloodshed, caused by 
the fact that man substituted his fixed and 
rigid dogma for the Holy Spirit as the final 
basis of religious authority. 

The story of that matchless Book of 
divine revelation, the Holy Scriptures, is 
one which shows practically this same 
method. It is an axiom of Biblical inter- 
pretation that this Book, which covers in 
its authorship so many centuries, is a pro- 
gressive revelation. God did not give the 
whole of his truth in Genesis; nor did the 
bloody campaigns of Joshua, or the spirit 
of the imprecatory Psalms tell of the divine 
love revealed in Jesus Christ. All through 
those generations man learned a little, and 
then more and more of the divine nature 
until at last Jesus taught men to call God, 
Father. Here again, man, through the 
pages of this Book, is seen generation by 
generation, and age by age slowly climbing 
up the altar stairs of divine revelation, 
pressing beneath his feet the half truths and 
larger truths continually given, until f ellow- 

[64] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

shiping with him who brought immortality 
to light and pointed man the path to the 
abundant life, he enters into communion 
with the infinite and eternal heart of a 
Heavenly Father. And, even then, he dis- 
covers that he stands only upon the shore 
of an ocean of infinite love, waves of which, 
beating upon his own life, tell of depths 
which only infinity knows, and eternity 
alone can reveal. 

In the light of this, which is so apparent 
to him who ponders the unfolding Scrip- 
tural message, the change of method, which 
the Christian Church adopted after the first 
century of its life, comes as a distinct and 
disappointing surprise. Man not only de- 
clared the canon of Scripture closed, and 
said by Church fiat that there could be no 
more literature divinely inspired, but the 
Church defined what it had found of God, 
and condensing these dogmas into creeds, 
sent them forth into the world with even 
more authority than they claimed for the 
Scriptures. What the Church said was taken 

[65] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

as the infallible guide of the soul. The 
Church, in other words, deliberately placed 
itself between man and his Bible ; it blocked 
the way between man and his Christ. Be- 
lieve what the Church said, or come under 
judgment with the pangs of eternal separa- 
tion from God hanging over the resisting 
soul. Moreover, nothing beyond what the 
dogma and creed stated should be preached, 
for the streams of revelation had dried up, 
the Great Revealer had said his last word, 
the definitions of duty, man, truth were com- 
plete and final. And they took this posi- 
tion in direct contradiction to the words of 
Jesus, "I have yet many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now. How- 
beit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, 
he shall guide you into all the truth." (John 
16:12, 13.) 

This position is especially reprehensible 
when we take into consideration the genesis 
and the contents of the great creeds of Chris- 
tian history. The early statements of Chris- 
tian belief, like the "Apostles' Creed" 

[66] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

(which by the way was not written by the 
Apostles), the "Athanasian Creed," and 
the "Nicene Creed" were not only the re- 
siduum of controversy, but they were essen- 
tially compromises, in which one or both 
sides had sacrificed for the sake of harmony 
some principle which they had hitherto 
devoutly believed. An examination of the 
contents of these creeds shows that with 
hardly an exception they intellectualize dis- 
cipleship, and, doctrinal agreement being 
the essential thing, they infer that Chris- 
tianity is a dogma rather than a life. 

The creed has its place. Everyone who 
thinks has his creed. The Friends are not 
without their statements of belief, but they 
insist that the creed has no place as a basis 
of Church membership. The reasons for 
this insistence we hope to show. The creed 
at best is a concise statement of belief, 
embodying in verbal form an experience 
through which an individual has passed. It 
is the precipitate of a religious experience. 
It is the crystalization in intellectual form 

[67] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

of the feelings of the heart and the aspira- 
tions of the soul, in so far as such a thing 
is possible. As such it has its real value in 
at least three ways. 

First, the creed is valuable as summariz- 
ing an experience through which the indi- 
vidual or church has passed at a given time. 
It is a good mile-stone along the way. The 
creed marks progress if it is larger, fuller, 
deeper than the one made a year ago. If 
it remains the same year after year it simply 
shows that while we have been going 
through the motions of progress we have in 
reality been standing still. We have been 
active, but our activity has not carried us 
anywhere. There has been much motion but 
little progress. 

Second, the creed is highly desirable in 
the process of its making as an intellectual 
gymnastic. We are urged by the Apostle 
to be able to give a reason for the faith that 
is within us. We must know clearly what 
that faith is. Such a process compels the 
soul to take count of stock. The effort to 

[68] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

formulate one's creed often prevents spirit- 
ual bankruptcy. 

Third, if the spiritual life has reached its 
terminal station, if there is no other field of 
truth through which to range, no more open 
country of divine revelation, no more eternal 
and infinite vistas in the divine nature as yet 
unexplored, then the creed is a most excel- 
lent bunting-post. If the soul has reached 
its maturity, and has passed into a senile 
condition, then there are no better grave 
clothes in which to give it a decent burial 
than the phrases of a creed. It is dead, so 
is the creed. If they fit each other let them 
be buried together. 

There are, however, occasions when such 
an arraignment of the creed seems too 
severe, for it often becomes an anchor for 
the soul when the breakers are roaring, the 
night is dark and the winds are contrary. 
Yes, but there come storms in every life 
when no creedal anchor will hold, and there 
are deep waters in experience where no 
intellectual conceptions can touch the rocks 

[69] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

below, or, touching them, can hold the soul 
from being driven by the tides of disap- 
pointment upon the ledges of despair. In 
the crisis the creed is pitifully insufficient, 
and for that reason, were there no other, 
the Friends base their fellowship upon a 
vital experience of the divine life within, 
and the divine leadership without. This 
must forever be deeper than the intellectual 
concept of it, and the creed can only be the 
lame mental effort made from time to time 
to describe the hidden development of an 
experimental faith, a faith which grows 
from more to more. 

"Our little systems have their day, 

They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

Given a Christian experience thus di- 
vinely begun and divinely led in its vital 
unfolding, and given an intellectual concep- 
tion of truth, or a creed, which is anything 
more than a tentative statement of soul 
growth, and the spirit of man finds itself in 
a strait jacket, forced to adjust itself to 

[70] 



i 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

certain rigidly defined lines. The shoe, 
which will today fit the child's foot, six 
months from now, if it has not been worn, 
will create a small sized rebellion the minute 
an attempt is made to put it on. Likewise 
the suit of clothes, perfect in size today, 
becomes in a little while ludicrously small. 
The shoes and the clothes have not changed, 
but the child has. It is not otherwise with 
a creed for a growing soul. At best it is a 
shoe to be outgrown, and a garment which 
soon becomes too small. "No man putteth 
new wine into old wine-skins ; else the wine 
will burst the skins, and the wine perisheth, 
and the skins; but they put new wine into 
fresh wine-skins." (Mark 2: 22.) 

The creed is inadequate as a basis of 
Church membership; it stands against the 
democracy of the human spirit; it fails to 
give due recognition to differences of age, 
divergences in temperament, grades of in- 
tellectual culture and types of genuine 
experience. A young man from college 
seeks a church home. His choice is not 

[71] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

determined by the creed, but by social and 
spiritual atmospheres. He is spiritually 
minded and a sincere Christian. When he 
studies the creed, he discovers that it is not 
an expression of his own faith. He agrees 
with some portions of it, with other parts he 
differs. He must sign it if he is to join 
this church with which in spirit and life he 
sincerely fellowships. What shall he do? 
For the sake of the fellowship he craves he 
will probably assent to the rigid intellectual 
requirement which stands between him and 
the church of his choice. He will sign the 
creed, but with "mental reservations" (a 
phrase which is a poor apology for intel- 
lectual falsehood). Within him, however, 
rises a protest which finds utterance in the 
memorable lines : 

"But still my human hands are weak 
To hold your iron creeds: 
Against the words ye bid me speak 
My heart within me pleads." 

Or, here is the boy twelve years of age. His 
spiritual life, cultivated and warmed into 
activity at the hearth-stone of the home, 

[721 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

seeks expression at the altar of the church. 
He must in his immaturity sign the same 
creed as the college trained adult. Every- 
one knows that he would never formulate 
his faith in the phraseology of that creed 
which has been framed by those who are 
mature, if not ripe in Christian experience. 
Or, at the other extreme, there comes seek- 
ing admission to the church the one whose 
Christian experience has been hammered 
into shape by hard knocks, and by rubbing 
elbows with the struggling world. His con- 
ceptions of divine truth at no stage of his 
growth can be couched in the terminology 
of the class-room. These illustrations are 
sufficient to demonstrate how inadequate a 
creed is as a basis for Church membership. 
The only adequate basis for Church fellow- 
ship is an experience, first of personal rela- 
tions with God, and second of direct lead- 
ership by his Spirit. These relations and 
this leadership will differ in each and every 
case just as an earthly father's relations and 
directions to his children differ with their 

[73] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

needs, temperaments and ages. But this 
communion and this guidance in every in- 
stance will be the growing expressions of a 
mutual love and a mutual faith. 

The bearing of this principle on the great 
question of "Church Unity' ' is as pertinent 
as it is timely. The true basis of fellowship 
within the membership of a church is the 
only adequate principle upon which denom- 
inations, differing in historical antecedents 
and intellectual conceptions, can ever hope 
to stand together. No two minds ever think 
alike, or state a truth in the same way; but 
love is the common denominator of human- 
ity. When the love of man reciprocates the 
embrace of the love of God it establishes an 
experience common in degree to all and 
lying far beneath the depths yet fathomed 
by any dogma. A common religious experi- 
ence, not a creed, is the only adequate basis 
of a real Church unity. When denomina- 
tions cease their anxious search for the 
points of contact among their sectarian 
dogmas, and give an equal concern to lay- 

[74] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

ing bare the foundations of religious experi- 
ence, and to building thereon, not intellec- 
tual scaffolding, but a structure composed 
of love, service and sacrifice, expressed in 
life, "Church Unity" will cease to be a 
vision, a dream and a question for debate; 
it will have become a reality. Conferences 
on "Faith and Order" can never hope to 
create "Church Unity." Unity is a flower 
that grows only out of experience and in 
an atmosphere of love. Given these, 
and the things that hold denominations 
apart will melt like icicles in the shin- 
ing of the warm spring sun, and the 
outward coming together will be but 
the expression of the common inward 
experience. 

Bergson is telling us that creation is even 
now in the process, that God still has all of 
life upon the potter's wheel, that existence 
is a flowing stream; and Eucken is pro- 
claiming that Christianity is a progressive 
historic movement still in the making. If, 
in the realm of present day thought, we have 

[75] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

philosophical testimony, thus running par- 
allel to our main contention, that the Chris- 
tian faith is an experience growing and 
unfolding into the ever enlarging life of 
God, have we not additional evidence to 
show that the creed as such can be little else 
than an intellectual stepping-stone, to aid 
us as we rise to heights of clearer spiritual 
vision? And, if these and other similar 
teachers are thus gathering up the consen- 
sus of opinion on religious matters, may we 
not find herein a reason why the man of the 
world has so little use in his life for the 
Church, which puts so much emphasis upon 
dogma, so little upon experience; gives so 
much place to creed and ritual, so little to 
life and conduct? 

If on such testimony as has been given 
we are prepared to admit that the creed falls 
short as a common platform of individual 
or interdenominational fellowship, and can- 
not express the permanent status of a living 
soul in its relation to the living God, we are 
ready to acknowledge that the real Chris- 

[76] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

tian experience may be described in terms 
of a great spiritual adventure. 

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient 
good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep 
abreast of Truth." 

For two hundred and fifty years the people 
called Friends have lived this spiritual ex- 
perience, and have borne consistent testi- 
mony to its reality. The trend of modern 
philosophical teaching opens up a territory 
for the soul's exploration which is in most 
hearty accord with man's inner searchings 
after God. Jesus pointed the way to, and 
intimated the leadership for this great 
adventure when he called attention to truths 
that were yet to be revealed, and to a new 
leadership which was about to be given. 
The canon of Scripture has been closed, but 
the channels of divine revelation remain 
open. We still live in the dispensation of 
the Holy Spirit. 

We do not move in our faith out upon 
the carefully laid dogmatic rails of an intel- 

[77] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

lectual theology, where all our thinking is 
done for us, and where with inert minds we 
pass over a certain well defined and previ- 
ously prepared road-bed to our eternal des- 
tiny. This is the easy way; mental assent 
to what others have thought is the only re- 
quirement. But we sail out upon the track- 
less ocean of the infinite and eternal life 
of our God, where every way is open before 
us, and where the spirit of advanture thrills 
the soul as we enter upon the exploration 
of the nature and the works of our Heavenly 
Father. We have no track laid for us, but 
better still, we have the chart of a divine 
purpose for each and every life; we have 
the sextant of a personal faith in God 
through Christ, who has immediate dealings 
with the soul; and we have the compass of 
a spiritual leadership, which always points 
true. With these we are safe. With these 
we are free. With these we have gone "the 
whole round of creation." 

"Each faculty tasked 
To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop 
was asked. 

[78] 



CREED OF THE CHURCH 

Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid 

bare. 
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the 

Infinite Care! 
Do I task any faculty highest to image success? 
I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no less, 
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen 

God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the 

clod." 

And then, when I face what has been 
called the Great Unknown, and enter the 
straits which lead out across the bar to the 
uncharted ocean of the life after death, I 
am still at peace, I am still free, I am still 
safe, for though 

"I know not where his islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 



[79] 



IV 

THE FIELD OF THE QUAKER 
MESSAGE 



To thee our full humanity, 

Its joys and pains, belong; 
The wrong of man to man on thee 

Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

Whittier. 

The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our 
Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and 
ever. 

The Revelation of John. 

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so 
on earth. 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 

Jesus. 

With faith in the wisdom of Almighty God, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and believing that it is his 
purpose to make his Church on earth a power for right- 
eousness and truth, the Friends labor for the alleviation 
of human suffering; for the intellectual, moral and spirit- 
ual elevation of mankind; and for purified and exalted 
citizenship. The Friends believe war to be incompatible 
with Christianity, and seek to promote peaceful methods 
for the settlement of all differences between nations and 
between men. 

Discipline. 



IV 

THE FIELD OF THE QUAKER 
MESSAGE 

"Christ for every life and all of life," 
is the motto of a great missionary program. 
It contains in a phrase the whole message of 
present day Christianity. Parallel with the 
call to the soul of man to make itself right 
with God it places the obligation to make all 
human relations harmonize with God's law 
of righteousness. The evangelistic note and 
the social note make a harmony, not a dis- 
cord; they elaborate in modern language 
the two great commandments of Jesus, 
"Thou shalt love thy God," and "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor." These words of 
the Master were never separated in his 
thought, his teaching, or his life. They 
were the two component parts of a single 
message. 

The Church has, however, in the past 

[83] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

fallen painfully short of proclaiming this 
twofold Gospel. It has concerned itself 
with the saving of the soul out of its evil 
setting; it has considered that the setting 
itself was neither possible, nor worthy of 
salvation. The Gospel was intended to 
reach down into the mud of the world's 
filth and drag out to safety a few precious 
jewels. To make an effort to clean up the 
mud was beyond its province. This spirit 
has shown itself in the mutual aloofness 
existing for so long between the program 
of the social settlement worker and the pro- 
gram of the neighboring Christian church; 
and also, in the glibness with which the aver- 
age minister within a generation has de- 
nounced social service as a part of the 
business of the Church of Christ. The 
uplift of the individual soul, not the uplift 
of the community in all phases of its life, 
has been the acknowledged mission of the 
Church. Many courageous souls, led by the 
Holy Spirit, have preached the necessity of 
righteousness and justice in the industrial, 

[84] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

political and social conditions of the neigh- 
borhoods in which they lived, only to be 
sternly reminded by those within and out- 
side the Church that their business was to 
preach the "Simple Gospel," not to be med- 
dling with outside affairs. 

Two courses of conduct have character- 
ized great sections of the Christian Church 
for nineteen centuries. The one found 
expression in the Middle Ages in monas- 
ticism, and in the present century in what 
we may call "Tolstoyism," a personal with- 
drawal from the surroundings and obliga- 
tions of the common life in an effort to keep 
the soul unsullied and unstained; a follow- 
ing in a literalistic way of some single and 
isolated injunctions of Jesus, while neglect- 
ing the whole tenor of his life. The other 
looked upon its faith as a matter separate 
and distinct from its ethical life. It kept 
its Christianity under lock and key in a 
compartment of the soul where it could be 
brought out on occasion. Its conduct was 
regulated, not by this faith, but by the eth- 

[85] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

ical standards of its generation. It moved 
along with the current of the life about it, 
holding its Christianity as a life-preserver, 
ever handy in case of need. Neither one of 
these courses appear to be in harmony with 
the spirit, teachings and life of him who did 
not live the ascetic life, and yet on the other 
hand set himself steadfastly against the 
downward moral current of his generation. 
The middle-of-the-road course which he 
chose was the difficult way. It called forth 
criticism from both sides. It was the Via 
Dolorosa. It led with unerring directness 
to Calvary. 

The slogan of so-called modern thought, 
"Back to Christ," has had a striking effect 
in reviving the long neglected social mes- 
sage of Christianity, and in giving the 
emphasis, which Jesus himself gave, to the 
second as well as to the first of his two great 
commandments. In striking accord with 
this effort to get back to Christ is the inter- 
pretation which the Friends have always 
placed upon their message in calling it 

[86] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

"Primitive Christianity Revived." Not only 
in the realm of simple faith in God, but also 
in conduct and service, the modern message 
of Christianity is sounding the same notes 
which were proclaimed and practiced by 
the Friends in the Seventeenth Century. 
When the preacher today utters the clarion 
call for righteousness in the affairs of gov- 
ernment, justice for all in the courts, simple 
humanity in industry, high moral standards 
in social life, and the religious opportunity 
in education ; if he turns to the Journal of 
George Fox, to the letters sent out by these 
early Friends to kings and rulers, to the 
messages they fearlessly delivered to men in 
places of authority, and to the record of their 
simple outspoken lives, he will find that in 
modern terms he is echoing the message of 
Quakerism, which in this wide field has with 
unvarying consistency been proclaimed by 
the Society of Friends for more than two 
hundred and fifty years. 

In bearing this full-orbed Gospel to the 
world the Friends do not play the role of 

[87] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

creators, though for the Seventeenth Cen- 
tury they were its rediscoverers. This mes- 
sage found its roots in the work of Moses, 
who under divine guidance inaugurated for 
a nation of slaves a social propaganda the 
modern significance of which the men of 
this generation are just beginning to under- 
stand. The prophets of Israel were great 
social reformers. Savonarola dominated the 
city of Florence, John Calvin virtually 
ruled Geneva, while as a worker in the realm 
of social righteousness John Knox of Scot- 
land has rarely if ever been equaled. These 
men applied the Gospel with relentless vigor 
to the whole of life. The Friends were the 
allies of these great world prophets. They 
fought under the same banner; they con- 
tended for the same ends. Because their 
weapons were unique, and their methods of 
campaign different, as well as because of 
actual accomplishments, they have won a 
worthy place among the heroes of social 
reform. 

The Friends have never practiced the 

[88] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

ascetic life, nor have they easily yielded to 
the spirit of worldliness. On the basis of 
their faith which brought to them an imme- 
diate recognition of the blessedness of divine 
fellowship, and under the leadership of the 
Holy Spirit whose will is their law for every 
act, they have pioneered in regions of per- 
sonal conduct, and they have prospected for 
God in the great realms of moral righteous- 
ness. In this they have walked the nar- 
row way, thinking not of consequence for 
weal or woe, and forsaking every material 
comfort that the spiritual message of the 
Christ might be heralded in word and work 
to the entire range of human experience. 

Their meetings were disturbed, their cus- 
toms were derided, their homes were mo- 
lested, they languished in prison, some died 
for their testimony. But through it all they 
saw only the one Light shining on the path 
of duty, and they heard but one Voice, 
"This is the way, walk ye in it." They 
became the unconscious cross bearers of the 
Seventeenth Century. Though they were 

[89] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

unaware of its effect, their quiet endurance 
of oppression aroused the conscience of the 
nation, and many of the blessings of civil 
and religious liberty which we today enjoy 
were won at the cost of their suffering. 

Their belief in the Light that lighteth 
every man, and their conviction that all alike 
are susceptible to the divine direction, led 
them with irresistible logic to the conclu- 
sion that every man stands on the same 
plane with every other man before God, and 
therefore all men are on the same level as 
members of society. This was revolutionary. 
This cut to the quick of long established 
social customs. For when in their direct 
and thorough way the Friends began to 
apply this truth to personal habits of speech 
and dress, and to the social and moral life 
of their age, they immediately became a 
disturbing element in their generation. 

On the basis of this truth of essential 
equality among men the Friend believed it 
inconsistent to use any titles which placed 
one man on a different level from another. 

[90] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

He therefore eliminated from his speech all 
titles like, "Mr." and "Mrs.," "Hon." and 

"Rev." and addressed every one simply with 
his full Christian name. The pronoun 
"you" was then always used as a plural, 
and when it was applied to the individual 
carried with it the subtle insinuation that he 
was equal to more than one. "You" was 
thus applied to a recognized superior, while 
"thou" was used in addressing an inferior. 
The Friend saw that this was inconsistent 
with his belief in man's equality. He there- 
fore adopted the use of "thee" and "thou" 
in addressing all individuals, and "you" only 
in speaking to more than one. It will be 
seen then that the origin of the Quaker's 
"plain speech" came not as the result of a 
whim or fancy, but was the effort to make 
the testimony of the lips consistent with the 
fundamental principle of the religious life. 
As a question of ethics the peculiar use of 
a pronoun may today seem a small thing to 
insist upon, but nevertheless, the "plain 
speech" of the Quaker is a living witness of 

[91] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

a one time sincere effort to stand for reality 
in the little as well as the great things of life. 
When brought before the courts he refused 
to take the oath, not only because he believed 
that Jesus forbade it when he said, "Swear 
not at all," (Matt. 5:34) but also because 
its use carried with it the implication that 
at other times he was not as careful for the 
truth of his statements. 

In the England of George Fox's day it 
was the custom for men to wear their hats 
on all occasions, even in the house and in 
the church. They did, however, make a 
single exception to this rule and removed 
their hats when prayer was offered as a sign 
of reverence for God. At about that time 
an innovation to this custom was made in 
the demand that men remove their hats in 
the presence of the king or his officials. 
The same requirement was made by Oliver 
Cromwell and his officers. To this decree 
the Friends refused obedience. To remove 
the hat was to deny the essential equality 
of all men; it was giving to some men the 

[92] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

same reverence which was given to God. 
They were abused and frequently haled into 
prison for their refusal to take the oath, 
or remove the hat ; but prison for them was 
better than sacrificing a principle which they 
believed was indispensable to a true under- 
standing of life. For them there was only 
one royalty. Its standard was not one of 
blood, or position, or wealth. It was a roy- 
alty revealed in those qualities of character 
which made men the children of the King 
of kings. 

In like manner the Friends by their 
"plain dress" have consistently maintained 
a testimony for the simple life. The tem- 
ples of the Holy Spirit are too sacred to be 
exploited by the fashion makers either of 
the Seventeenth or the Twentieth Centuries. 
In the early years of Quakerism the absence 
of ornamentation in dress, and the actual 
severity of garb were due to the Puritanical 
suppression of the aesthetic sense. In the 
present generation, while the value of beauty 
is being recognized, the quiet simplicity and 

[93] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

modesty of the Friends' dress is a protest 
by example against the gaudy whims, and 
even the immoralities of the shifting styles 
of the passing hour. 

The simple life finds among Friends its 
warmest supporters. They stand on this 
platform not only for the self-satisfaction 
and real contentment to be found in it, but 
because ostentation and show build up arti- 
ficial walls in humanity's common life. All 
men cannot be brothers under such a regime. 

This actual practice of the brotherhood 
of man became a mighty leveler in the midst 
of the upper, middle and lower classes. It 
cut like a knife down through the crusts of 
society. The caste systems of India are 
universally recognized as a social blight. 
The Friend has maintained a testimony 
against all caste, not only in India, but also 
against the caste of aristocracy in England, 
and the caste of wealth in America, which 
are parasitical monstrosities, feeding upon 
the political and social democracy of the 
English speaking world. To the Friend all 

[94] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

men are inherently on the same level. In 
the early day he treated with equal respect 
for his sacred personality, Oliver Cromwell 
on the Dictator's throne, the judge on the 
bench, and the humblest peasant of the 
realm. They were all alike children of the 
Heavenly Father. Today the fatherhood 
of God and the brotherhood of man are 
fundamental principles of action in the 
Society of Friends. In this the Friends 
believe they consistently follow in the foot- 
steps of him who counseled with Nicodemus, 
the ruler of the Jews, and sat on the well- 
curb in conversation with the woman of 
Samaria; who earned the reputation of 
being the friend of publicans and sinners, 
and who feasted the multitudes by the lake 
shore; who ate with the publicans in the 
house of Matthew, and was guest in the 
home at Bethany. Classes and races pale 
into insignificance when in the affairs of 
men the Cosmopolitan Christ assumes his 
rightful place. 

When the Friend used his fundamental 

[95] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

conception of the universal saving Light 
to form an estimate of man he found that 
it placed upon him a new valuation. He 
was no longer a thing, or a mere animal. 
He was potentially a child of God. This 
gave the Friend a reverence for personality, 
a reverence greater than that which he could 
ever place upon church, altar, or sacrament. 
God values men more highly than the so- 
called holy things. Men, not things are 
God's great concern. This shifted the em- 
phasis from the building of cathedrals to 
the building of men, for God dwells in tem- 
ples not made by hands. Wherever there- 
fore man was oppressed, wherever man was 
suffering, wherever man was enslaved, be 
that slavery industrial, social, mental or 
religious, wherever man was prevented by 
any cause from building himself up in God, 
there the Friend heard the voice of the 
Spirit calling him to proclaim liberty to the 
captives, and the opening of the prison to 
them that were bound. This made him a 
reformer, and he went as one anointed of 

[96] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

the Lord down into the arena of life to 
battle for the truth. 

In the world in which he found himself, 
where social life was hollow and empty, 
where business dealings on the square were 
the exception, not the rule, and where poli- 
tics spelled corruption, the Friend set him- 
self the task of making wrongs right. He 
rejected every social custom that trod with 
thoughtless feet upon the sacred precincts 
of man's personality; he plumbed his busi- 
ness methods with the perpendicular ethics 
of the Sermon on the Mount; he maintained 
that what was morally wrong could not be 
politically right. 

"He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 
That nothing stands alone, 
That whoso gives the motive, makes 
His brother's sin his own." 

In a time when one war followed another 
in rapid succession, when fighting was the 
real business of strong men, when the nurs- 
ing of hates and grudges was the prime 
occupation of governments, the Society of 
Friends denounced the whole program. For 

[97] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

them the peace propaganda was never a 
question of good economics; it was a ques- 
tion of good religion ; there could be no 
Christianity in fighting, because the Christ 
laid down laws of love, service and sacrifice, 
and placed a premium upon the sacredness 
of man's person. 

When the first drop of human blood 
cried out to God from the ground the voice 
of the Almighty summoned the murderer 
to account in words that still echo and re- 
echo even above the din of European strife, 
"Where is thy brother?" The Society of 
Friends picked up that old question and 
trumpeted it to the world through the Gos- 
pel of the Christ. War, all war is wrong, 
because God is our Father and all men are 
brothers, and Jehovah God, the Father of 
our Lord Christ, calls men to account today, 
as then and ever since, for the shedding 
of fraternal blood. War is contrary to a 
Father's love and at variance with the spirit 
of the Christ, who never lifted a finger to 
injure a living thing, who taught that love 

[98] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

was the principle of all true life, and who 
prayed for his murderers while they were 
crucifying him. Moreover, the imaginative 
conception of Jesus of Nazareth as captain 
of a company of soldiers, as general of an 
army going forth to kill their fellowmen, 
for whatever cause, or as commander of a 
battleship armed to destroy life and prop- 
erty, is a mental monstrosity too awful to 
even think. To think of him thus is to lose 
him as our Christ. The Friends have always 
borne a testimony against war, have refused 
to fight, and have been the prime movers 
in practically every effort for the peace of 
the world in the past two and a half cen- 
turies. They have sincerely attempted to 
follow in the footsteps of One, Jesus of 
Nazareth, who taught nothing but the prin- 
ciples of love and peace, and on one occa- 
sion told a disciple to put up his sword; for 
all they that take the sword shall perish 
with the sword. 

Because of their loyalty to truth, and their 
rigid adherence to the literal practice of 

[99] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

their moral and religious principles more 
than one thousand Friends were in prison 
at one time during the rule of Cromwell. 
Those inhuman pens called jails, foul to the 
point of pestilence, and breeding places of 
every namable vice were the habitations for 
months at a time of those Quakers who were 
sentenced to imprisonment, not because they 
had committed crime, but because they re- 
fused to comply with trifling demands made 
upon them, which they believed were unjust 
and contrary to the essentials of their faith. 
This silent endurance of persecution and 
suffering for truth's sake paved the way for 
the victorious issue of the battle for liberty 
of thought which was waged during the next 
half -century. 

The Friend's high estimate of the sacred- 
ness of human life, coupled with what he 
had endured in the bitterest and most unjust 
persecution, made him a valiant champion 
in the effort to change the penal laws, and 
reform the horrible prison system. There 
were in England in 1760 more than two 

[100] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

hundred capital offenses, and the treatment 
of prisoners in a nation, which for ten cen- 
turies had been Christian in name, would 
have been discreditable to the barbarism 
of Africa. The Friends have been largely- 
instrumental in enacting laws more in keep- 
ing with the worth of man, and in inau- 
gurating a humane treatment for the unfor- 
tunate inmates of prisons the world over. 
Men have never ceased to marvel at the 
prison reform work accomplished by Eliz- 
abeth Fry. But when we note the back- 
ground for her work in the suffering of her 
own people, who in a previous century had 
endured so much, and the inspiration for 
her work in the basic principles of her faith, 
it is not to be wondered at that she with the 
love of Christ in her heart could fellowship 
with the inmates of Newgate Prison, where 
even the keepers dared not enter unarmed. 
It is not to be wondered at that she brought 
order out of chaos in that hellish place ; nor 
are we surprised to find that in conference 
with the heads of her nation she advocated 

[101] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

principles which in the Twentieth Century 
are recognized as basal to the modern re- 
formatory program. All workers in this 
realm of social service see in Elizabeth Fry 
the guardian angel of the unfortunate law 
breaker, and the patron saint of prison 
reform. 

As early as 1671 George Fox protested 
against slavery as a custom inherently evil. 
As early as 1688 the Friends of German- 
town, Pa., held meetings to speak against 
the slavery system as established in this 
country, and to advise their members against 
the slave trade. In 1742 John Woolman 
began a crusade against it. In 1760 the 
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting made the 
holding of slaves a matter of Church dis- 
cipline. Thus, sixteen years before the Dec- 
laration of Independence the Society of 
Friends in Pennsylvania had officially and 
actually eliminated slavery from their midst. 
This was more than a century before the 
Emancipation Proclamation. It is not 
surprising therefore to learn that in the 

[102] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

period immediately preceding the Civil War 
practically all the Friends were abolition- 
ists. And it was but a natural consequence 
that all the way from Mason and Dixon's 
line to the frontiers of Canada the homes 
of Quakers became the stations of the "Un- 
derground Railway," over which thousands 
of slaves found their way to freedom. In 
the Parliament of England it was this same 
love of freedom for all enslaved everywhere 
which raised the voice of the Quaker, John 
Bright, in favor of the North, at a time 
when, had it not been for his influence, Eng- 
land would have been openly allied with the 
Confederate States. 

It was this atmosphere which gave birth 
to the poetic spirit of John G. Whittier; 
a spirit, which, finding utterance in the 
"Voices of Freedom," and in his other abo- 
lition activities, well nigh, if not quite, made 
him the hero of Emancipation. Another 
signed the Proclamation, but the part this 
man had in preparing the way for that act 
it is hard to over estimate. 

[103] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

Quakerism is indigenous to American 
soil. It ought to flourish prolifically in this 
atmosphere of liberty. The Quaker's love 
of equality is an essential of American 
democracy. The spirit that denounced hat 
worship and human slavery is the spirit 
which framed the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. It is not surprising therefore that in 
the present age, wherever the shackles of an 
industrial, social, mental, or religious slav- 
ery hamper the free activities of the human 
spirit, there the voice of the Friend is heard 
in protest ; there he is seen working to free 
the imprisoned; there the Present Day Mes- 
sage of Quakerism is needed. 

When the leaders of many religious sects 
devote so much time and energy to discus- 
sion and disputation regarding the nature 
of their forms and sacraments, and the 
method of their application, when denomi- 
national histories devote three quarters of 
their bulk to discussions about the place of 
the altar, the style of priestly robes, and 
the authority of this and that Church officer, 

[104] 



FIELD OF THE MESSAGE 

one seems to hear the echo of a voice com- 
ing down through the centuries which said, 
"Ye tithe mint and anise and cummin." 
(Matt. 23 : 23.) And he looks for a people, 
who in this age, as well as in the past, will 
live with a simple faith upon an immediate 
spiritual revelation, who will depend upon 
a divine leadership which guides them to a 
constantly deepening fellowship with God, 
who will need not in this great spiritual 
quest the unwarranted emphasis which is 
placed upon ceremony, form, sacrament, 
and Church authority, and who will esteem 
it a great joy to consecrate their lives to 
the establishment in the hearts of men 
and in all human relations of the great 
Christlike principles of love, service and 
sacrifice. 

In the early days the Society of Friends 
caught the vision of a life like this. They 
endeavored, though the cost was heavy, to 
put the principles of Jesus into practice. 
History bears witness to the fact that their 
message has been silently leavening the 

[105] 



MESSAGE OF QUAKERISM 

whole lump of Christianity since the middle 
of the Seventeenth Century. 

Primitive Christianity revived was a very 
real thing to the Quaker of those early 
years. It is no less real today. They at- 
tempted to take Jesus seriously, when hate 
not love, selfishness not service, were the 
guiding principles of life. The Quakerism 
of the present day must with equal serious- 
ness preach and live that same message. 
We must lift every life and all of life to 
such a place of quiet above the uproar of the 
world's confusion, that all humanity shall be 
prepared to say, 

"Where cross the crowded ways of life, 
Where sound the cries of race and clan, 
Above the noise of selfish strife, 
We hear thy voice, O Son of Man. 



O Master, from the mountain side, 
Make haste to heal these hearts of pain; 

Among these restless throngs abide, 
O tread the city's streets again; 

Till sons of men shall learn thy love, 
And follow where thy feet have trod; 

Till glorious from thy heaven above, 
Shall come the City of our God." 



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